Betty Klopp has been holding on to this hair and skin for nearly 45 years. “Of course I’ve kept it,” Klopp told KPIC News. “I wouldn’t give it up for anything.”

She believes the clump came from a bigfoot. No one has proven the existence of the bigfoot – or sasquatch or yeti or skunk ape, as some call the creature. Klopp is a convinced the forest dweller is really out there. “Oh definitely,” she said. “I don’t think people should go around shooting him if they find him.”

Klopp said her parents were driving along in the 1960s, towing a small trailer, when they swerved off the road to avoid hitting what they believed was a man. Klopp said her parents stopped at the Porter Creek Store to assess what had happened. They got out of the car and searched the area, but they found nothing. The next day, her parents discovered pieces of skin and hair snagged on the trailer. “This is something you don’t run into every day, quite literally,” Klopp said.

She said the material was sent to the University of Montana for testing about 3 years ago. The results showed the DNA was too deteriorated and the hair too degraded to make any identification.

DNA preservation all depends on the conditions. Mummies survive because they’ve been in a unvarying climate, ideal for preservation. Whereas the conditions for these hairs have likely not been very conducive for long-term preservation.

Looks an awful lot like horse tail to me. The degrading may have taken place as a result of improper storage. Putting hair in Ziploc bags is a surefire way to ensure that. Keep hairs and tissue in paper bags not plastic. The hair can also be looked at under an electron microscope and be compared to existing samples like horse and bear etc. Seems like only partial testing took place.

The ball of alleged Bigfoot hair I had mysteriously disappeared, never to be seen again. Not saying it was an unusual disappearance, who knows? It vanished, and did not reappear from its hiding place when I moved. GONE. My daughter found it hiking in NM, and said she smelled it as soon as she got in the area, as it smelled just like the one she saw in 2006, but that’s a longer story.